Chiara Lungarotti: Italy’s Winegrower of the Year

ByKelly Chidi-Ogbonna
Editorial illustration of Chiara Lungarotti receiving Italy's Winegrower of the Year recognition, standing beside a presenter and holding a framed artwork.

A woman just won Winegrower of the Year in Corriere della Sera’s Italian wine guide. And her story starts decades before the trophy, with another woman, a museum, and a small town betting on wine tourism before it was a thing.

In 1974, Maria Grazia Lungarotti opened a wine museum in Torgiano, a small town in Umbria. Italy’s wine tourism boom was still decades away. Nobody had invented the sunset aperitivo photo yet. She did it anyway.

Fast forward to October 2026. Chiara Lungarotti, who now runs the winery Maria Grazia helped found, was named Winegrower of the Year. In the very same week, Wine Spectator unveiled a new “Led by Women” list of Italian wineries, and her winery wasn’t on it. There’s a perfectly good reason, and the story behind it is worth your coffee.

Quick Facts

  • Award: Chiara Lungarotti, CEO of Lungarotti in Torgiano, Umbria, is Winegrower of the Year (Vignaiola dell’anno) in Corriere della Sera’s 2027 wine guide
  • The guide: “I migliori 100 Vini e Vignaioli d’Italia”, now in its 13th edition
  • The museum: Torgiano’s wine museum opened in 1974, founded by Maria Grazia Lungarotti
  • The list: Wine Spectator’s OperaWine 2027 picked 150 Italian wineries, 46 of them in a new “Led by Women” group
  • Umbria’s share: three of the 150, and none in “Led by Women”
  • The reason: each winery sits in only one group, and Lungarotti is a “Legacy Icon”

It Started With a Museum

Giorgio Lungarotti founded Cantine Lungarotti in the 1960s, and his wife, Maria Grazia Marchetti Lungarotti, helped build it from 1962. Her special project was the museum. According to Gambero Rosso, the wine museum in Torgiano opened on 23 April 1974, and she added an olive and olive oil museum in 2000. Gambero Rosso remembers her as a pioneer of wine tourism in Italy.

Her last project, in 2024, was a book on the history of the wine museum. She died on 5 November 2025, aged 99. That’s a long career built on one idea: that people might like to learn about wine, and that a small town could teach them.

Then Came Chiara and Teresa

Giorgio died in 1999, and that’s when Chiara took the helm. She holds a degree in agriculture with a specialisation in viticulture, and she’s been CEO ever since. She runs the company with her sister Teresa Severini, who looks after marketing and communications. Teresa holds an enology degree from the University of Perugia and a specialisation from Bordeaux. The family says she is a founder of Le Donne del Vino, the Italian association for women in wine. Two of her children now work for the winery and its foundation.

It’s a family where the women keep passing the wagon along, and it’s a very good wagon.

The Award, and Why It Matters

Corriere della Sera’s guide gives out prizes for wines and for people. This year, the wine ranking put Eredi Fuligni’s Brunello di Montalcino 2021 first, followed by San Filippo’s Le Lucere and Roberto Voerzio’s Barolo Brunate 2022. That ranking draws on James Suckling’s Top 100 Wines of Italy 2026.

Montalcino and Barolo took the bottle prizes. Umbria took the one that actually runs the place.

At the guide’s launch, the editor, Luciano Ferraro, called Chiara “the guardian of Umbria,” according to Wine Industry Advisor, for protecting the landscape and promoting the region’s potential. Her answer was to say she was honoured and to credit her team, which is exactly what a good boss does. Over the past two years, they’ve also reworked the flagship wines Rubesco and Torre di Giano, first launched in 1962, in a more contemporary style.

The Plot Twist: A Women-Led List That Skipped a Women-Led Winery

OperaWine is Wine Spectator’s selection of 150 top Italian wineries, shown in Verona before Vinitaly. This year’s list was announced in New York on 26 October, and it was split into three groups:

  • Legacy Icons (31): wineries that have appeared in every edition
  • Classics (73): leading producers with a long record of quality
  • Led by Women (46): new this year, for wineries where women hold key roles, from ownership and winemaking to representation

Umbria has three wineries on the list: Lungarotti as a Legacy Icon, and Arnaldo Caprai and Tabarrini as Classics. None are in “Led by Women.”

So what happened? Every wedding planner knows this pain. You can only seat a guest at one table, even if they belong at three. The 150 wineries appear once each, and the groups add up exactly (31 + 73 + 46 = 150). I haven’t seen a written rule, so that’s my reading, but it fits. Lungarotti has been on every edition’s list, so it sits with the Legacy Icons. Nobody was left out on purpose. The seating plan just has one seat per guest.

Is Lungarotti women-led? Judging by who runs it, yes. So it isn’t a snub, just seating-plan fine print.

What I Take From This

Here’s what stays with me. A list can seat a winery only once. A family can keep a table going for more than sixty years.

Look at the timeline. Flagship wines first launched in 1962. A wine museum in 1974. Chiara as CEO from 1999. An olive oil museum in 2000. The flagships reworked again over the past two years. No single list can hold all of that, and I think that’s the point. Women have been running serious Italian wineries long before anyone made a category to count them, and the best stories are the ones that were never waiting for a trophy.

If you’d like to taste what all this fuss is about, start with the flagships, Rubesco and Torre di Giano. The Montefalco estate, now being renamed Tenuta Brancalupo, makes Montefalco Rosso, Sagrantino and a new white from Trebbiano Spoletino, according to Wine Industry Advisor. I haven’t tasted them, so the tasting notes are your job. Report back.

And if Umbria is new to you, I think it deserves far more attention than it gets. Sagrantino and Trebbiano Spoletino are just the start, and I explain more of the lesser-known grapes in my post on lesser-known Italian grapes.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Chiara Lungarotti? The CEO of Lungarotti, the family winery in Torgiano, Umbria. She has led it since 1999 and was named Winegrower of the Year in Corriere della Sera’s 2027 wine guide.

Is Lungarotti a women-led winery? Yes. Chiara has been CEO since 1999, and her sister Teresa Severini handles marketing and communications.

Why isn’t Lungarotti in OperaWine’s “Led by Women” group? It is listed as a Legacy Icon instead. Each winery appears in only one of the three groups, so it can’t be in both.

What is OperaWine? Wine Spectator’s selection of 150 top Italian wineries, presented in Verona just before Vinitaly. The 2027 tasting is on 10 April 2027.

What are Rubesco and Torre di Giano? They are Lungarotti’s flagship wines, first launched in 1962.

One Last Thing

If you remember one thing, remember this: a list seats you once, but a family keeps the table going. And make it the museum. In 1974, someone opened the doors to a wine museum in a small Umbrian town and trusted that visitors would come. They did, and decades later, a lot of us are still queuing for the sunset aperitivo photo.

Have you tried a wine from Torgiano or Montefalco? Tell me what you thought.

— Kelly 🍷

#ItalianWine #Umbria #WomenInWine #Lungarotti #OperaWine

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Sources

Information checked in November 2026. Lists and awards can change, so confirm details with the organisers.

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